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Amazon is selling stolen art, fake products and is infringing copyrights
- ReconBob 8y agoIf your brand is being impacted by Amazon listings that are illegally using your copyright images, please visit www.3PM.ai and send us a request. We want to help.
- brian_herman__ 8y agoI don’t any content on this post just a link to Facebook?
- rkho 8y agoThe link takes you to an exchange of comments on a Facebook page that provides context for the title of this post on HN. Were you unable to view it?
- CaliforniaKarl 8y agoI don’t have a Facebook account, and on my phone I only see the initial post from Amazon.co.uk.
- CamelCaseName 8y agoTry this: https://imgur.com/a/L1gFAqy https://imgur.com/a/L1gFAqy
- brian_herman 8y agoThanks!@
- bb88 8y agoIn 2018, things are truly great for large copyright owners. But for small copyright owners, it sucks.
- valbaca 8y agoHere's the product page in question: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Orlco-Paintings-Decoration-Collections-16x16inch/dp/B07KJ8XJL5 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Orlco-Paintings-Decoration-Collecti... You can clearly see the artist's signature cut-off in the bottom left of the image. Here it is on the artist's website as well: https://tsevis.com/editorial-illustration-2016-2017?fbclid=IwAR2fg_-8P7FXh3SOY9sgXGeOS4qOShf57DZLjAXpmA93JXyOcwdN3O2F0Rk https://tsevis.com/editorial-illustration-2016-2017?fbclid=I...
- taobility 8y agoI would say those posters are created by some software, definitely not that person.
- eseehausen 8y agoLooks like the person violating the copyright just reuploaded under a new ID after the original takedown, which is why the artist is still seeing his work up there.
- edoo 8y agoThey also allow illegal infringement on sellers. I knew a family that ran an Amazon import business and they bought an entire batch of surplus tennis shoes directly from a company in the primary supply chain of the shoe company. All on the up and up. The shoe company filed a complaint with Amazon that they were not authorized to sell their shoes and Amazon closed down the related listings. That was a serious restraint of trade and Amazon could likely be sued to the moon but they just moved on. I really wish they would have pursued the lawsuit against Amazon.
- traek 8y agoWhat did Amazon do here that was wrong? It sounds like these people bought illegitimate “ghost shift” shoes from a factory and the brand owner correctly shut them down.
- edoo 8y agoIf you obtain a product legitimately you are allowed to sell it. This wasn't a counterfeit product nor was it claimed to be. Just because a company has a policy of only selling to authorized retailers does not allow them to restrain the trade of their merchandise by legal owners. It would have been a huge lawsuit.
- traek 8y agoYes but ghost shift goods are counterfeits unless they are free of any logos and other intellectual property. The first sale doctrine doesn’t apply because it was never purchased from the IP owner at any point in the line. If I have a factory in Bangladesh print some t-shirts with the Nike logo on them, I wouldn’t be able to sell them (at least in the US) because I didn’t get permission from Nike, which owns the rights to their logo. It’s the same thing here. It doesn’t matter if the factory happens to also produce legitimate Nike t-shirts.
- edoo 8y agoI believe you are trying to classify what they bought as something it isn't (ghost shift goods). They legitimately bought the surplus from an authorized retailer. If you go buy a bunch of Nike shirts from a Nike store they cannot stop you from selling them on eBay or Amazon (at least legally). At best the shoe company could have sued their authorized retailers for the bulk sale if it violated a contract. Amazon happily complied with an illegal request to restrain trade causing damages to a small company. The lawsuit would have been huge.
- freyir 8y agoEveryone at Amazon is supposed to be committed to Amazon's Leadership Principles. Each new hire is supposed to learn them and live by them. The very first principle is: Customer Obsession: Leaders start with the customer and work backwards. They work vigorously to earn and keep customer trust. Although leaders pay attention to competitors, they obsess over customers. What a joke.
- xianb 8y agosounds like a nice generic company value/principle
- xiphias2 8y agoI believe it was really true when Amazon was a small company that needed growth by word of mouth, just like Google by not being evil. When the companies get huge, word of mouth is not the best growth tactic anymore.
- dylan604 8y agoThat's twice in the past couple of days that I've mirrored a comment because I've clicked new tab on the reply rather than just replying immediately
- dylan604 8y agoAlmost as funny as Don't be evil. Once the company becomes beholden to shareholders, all of the mottos/ethos/etc that they may have started with become null & void. Whether that's from an out right declaration, or just no longer recognizable from the slippery slope of decisions while chasing the stock price.
- IWeldMelons 8y agoAt least, "Dont be evil" sounds a lot classier than that DPRK level propaganda.
- marcinzm 8y agoIs it a joke? Does the average customer care more about saving $10 or protecting someone's copyright? I'd argue given the how prevalent copyright infringement by people has been that they'd rather save $10. So Amazon is doing exactly what customers want which is cheap goods irrespective of everything else.
- skilled 8y agoHow many people got involved in that conversation? At least 3 different support people. And neither had a direct response to the guy. This corporate jargon is just painful to read and companies like Amazon should know better.
- ottonomy 8y agoIt's pretty much impossible for Amazon to tell whether an item is a licensed use of a copyrighted creative work or not. It's perfectly legal to resell work that was legally bought with no additional permission from the creator, for instance. (It is pretty clear from a human analysis here that the seller is infringing copyrights by making prints of digital images found online, but it would be pretty much impossible to create some sort of filter that would block these products from being offered on the platform). From the thread, it looked like the support representatives engaged with the person complaining on Facebook, reported some items had been removed in the past based on takedown requests. That's pretty responsive, all in all. Maybe the artist could enlist some additional help discovering and helping him and other affected artists report for takedown the items that this seller is offering so they'd eventually . Or they could gather some funds and sue Amazon.
- mv4 8y agoYes, it may be impossible to create a filter to detect new (previously unseen) copyrighted products on the platform. However, once a copyrighted product has been through a dispute and the owner has been established by Amazon - it's completely feasible to programmatically detect and flag this product once it re-appears under other accounts. It would actually be quite easy, given Amazon's technology expertise. From reviewing the thread the artist posted, it appears that's why he's frustrated - that fakes keep re-appearing, and Amazon is asking him to jump through hoops again, even though his authorship had been established. So, no - I don't feel it's reasonable to ask the author to enlist people to help him police the marketplace, Amazon can easily solve this problem (future infringement) with technology.
- Spivak 8y ago1. Write a book and sell it on Amazon. 2. Some counterfeiter creates a listing with an infringing copy of the book. 3. DMCA request is filed and the listing is taken down and the account is banned. 4. Someone else buys a legitimate copy of my book and creates a listing for it on Amazon. What should Amazon do?
- 8y ago
- herbst 8y agoIn switzerland (which is outside of amazon's prime and shipping area) amazon is nothing else than a super expensive version of AliExpress where everybody tries to hide that they are in fact from China.
- RileyJames 8y agoWhat is the shipping experience from aliexpress like?
- ggcdn 8y agoI've ordered a couple of things from AliExpress to Canada, the cheapest shipping options take a long time... I think I waited 2 months for a pack of rare earth magnets once. There are FedEx, etc options available but sometimes they are more expensive than the items themselves.
- userbinator 8y agoIt depends on the seller, the exact product, and whether you pay extra for faster shipping. Even then, it varies wildly. (The many stories about people receiving goods over a year after they were ordered and long after they were assumed to have been lost and refunded are not lying.)
- otterley 8y ago(I work for Amazon, but not in the retail division. Opinions are mine and not of the company. I'm also an attorney, but this is not legal advice.) There is a channel in pretty much every company, large or small, for reporting copyright violations and other legal complaints. That channel is the legal department (in the US, the DMCA contact point), not the customer service department. If you want a company to actually take action, you have to get the right people involved. In Amazon's case, it's right here: https://www.amazon.com/report/infringement https://www.amazon.com/report/infringement If you complain to the wrong people, expect a suboptimal response. They're not trained to help in these cases, and don't always have the authority to short-circuit the bureaucratic process like the legal department does.
- Balgair 8y agoAside: Thank you for all the help here! These comments are amazingly helpful. Do you have a blog or other repository of this knowledge such that we can search for it there? Though I have no issues with Amazon now, I can imagine I may have some in the future. Searching through old HN comments to try to find this data is, well, sub-optimal. Again, thank you!
- CamelCaseName 8y agoAs the article/message chain clearly shows, the author did submit an infringement report to that link. In fact, so have I. As the author posted a screenshot of, you get an email reply after some time saying something to the effect of "We have reviewed and removed the content" ...except, nothing was removed. The infringing content is still there. The exact same thing happened to me. Same exact email. Edit, here's my email from Amazon: https://i.imgur.com/mzXycfk.jpg https://i.imgur.com/mzXycfk.jpg -- nothing was actually removed.
- otterley 8y agoI looked at the thread and it appears that the product ID (ASIN) that was the subject of the original takedown request was not the same as the ASIN of the the subsequent complaint. If it appears on multiple catalog pages, or a subsequent violation is alleged, each ASIN must be reported. Unfortunately this is the downside of being an IP rights holder - policing is a PITA. (Amazon, do their credit, does offer a brand registry, but that protects against trademark infringement, not copyright infringement.) In your case, assuming they did not do exactly what they said they would do (remove the infringing content from the specific listing page referred to by the ASIN), I'd have your attorney send a takedown notice to the following address: Copyright Agent Amazon Legal Department P.O. Box 81226 Seattle, WA 98108 If your content is on multiple product listings, you'll need to identify each ASIN.
- tokyodude 8y agoOnly tangentially related but type in any product category like say "socks". Near the top right set Sort By: to "Price High to Low" Result: $14000 pair of socks $9000 tube of toothpaste $3800 package of rubber bands $1000 usb-c cable $45000 water bottle. Curious why Amazon can't fix this. It makes them look like they have zero control, zero trustworthiness, a scam site. Note I don't normally choose to sort that way but those items with those prices show up in my regular searches quite often
- tyingq 8y agoAt least in some cases, it's two competitors using (bad) automated pricing tools. When one auto-raises the price, the other responds, which triggers the first to raise again. Over and over. To the point where you get book listings priced over $20M. http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358 http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=358 But yeah...you'd think Amazon would have some sort of sanity filter.
- cwilkes 8y agoThose $14k socks could be a money laundering operation as well. Happens on AirBnB, course it might be easier on there as who knows what the real price us of a one if a kind house vs a pair of socks.
- bootlooped 8y agoSellers can set the prices of the things they're selling. It would be hard to have third party sellers if you didn't allow them that. Sometimes when sellers don't want a particular Asin to sell temporarily they will raise the price to something insane instead of deactivating the listing. I agree it does look janky.
- partiallypro 8y agoI've said it several times...but counterfeit items on Amazon is a big big problem. I've gotten counterfeit goods there in the past and just today I almost bought 2 items; saw Amazon had the cheapest price...then I looked at the reviews. It was very clear people were getting counterfeit goods, some with the UPC I was going to buy actually catching fire (I've had several of this brand and I find this difficult to believe happening a couple of times in the same review thread.) So anyhow, I'm going to Best Buy tomorrow to buy both the things I was going to buy. Amazon is slowly losing my business.
- andrei_says_ 8y agoI drove to REI to buy a yeti insulated cup because the ones on amazon were reported counterfeit. They’re already losing my business.
- foobiekr 8y agoI recently bought a number of items at REI instead of Amazon for specifically that reason. I am in actually still in a sort of disbelief that this is necessary, but as a once faithful customer (preferring Amazon Prime for everything), I've started avoiding Amazon for anything important or expensive.
- Marsymars 8y agoIt's not surprising that a co-op specializing in high-quality, and often safety-critical goods can deliver a higher quality of product/service than an online seller-of-everything. It is a surprising result that I can often more confidently buy a product on eBay than on Amazon.
- andrei_says_ 8y agoBut we’re not talking higher quality. It’s supposed to be the same. Just not a fake. So in my experience Amazon actively empowers fraud, at our expense.
- 8y ago
- kerng 8y agoOnce I ordered a painting and it never arrived. Amazon didn't give me back my money as seller claims it was delivered. Seller never responded to an inquiry from my side. Since then I'm not ordering much from Amazon anymore - there is no customer service and they collaborate with and support thiefs.
- colejohnson66 8y agoDid you try a chargeback?
- charliebrownau 8y agoIs it really AMAZON the company or are people selling the product on amazons site
- retrobox 8y agoI've had fake headphones (more than once) and fake software. I contacted customer services and they didn't even seem to understand why I was trying to point out all the fake products listed on the site. Needless to say, they are all still there and no action was taken. Take a quick search for headphones by "Apple", I doubt any of these are genuinely Apple: https://smile.amazon.co.uk/s/s/ref=sr_nr_p_89_0?fst=as%3Aoff&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3AApple+EarPods%2Cp_89%3AApple&keywords=Apple+EarPods&ie=UTF8&qid=1546083082&rnid=1632651031 https://smile.amazon.co.uk/s/s/ref=sr_nr_p_89_0?fst=as%3Aoff... The problem is it's more profitable not to care about these problems.